07 June 2005

Nethra Brings Film To Mobile Phones

Nethra Imaging has debuted a family of digital still camera chips that brings the image quality of the film industry to mobile phones.

The programmable image processor family, complete with an embedded ARM core, will provide performance, flexibility and low power for a wide range of digital consumer applications, according to Nethra. Nethra is targeting its technology for 3-megapixel camera modules in mobile phones.

According to analyst firm InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, the worldwide camera phone market is expected to surpass 860 million units in 2009. "Camera phone owners are looking for better image quality before they will begin to take more pictures, and they primarily measure image quality by megapixels," says Jill Aldort, senior consultant at InfoTrends. "We believe the development cycle for camera phones has accelerated to answer growing consumer demand, and many handset manufacturers will skip over two megapixel designs in favor of three megapixels. Sophisticated image processing solutions like Nethra's will resolve camera phone image quality shortcomings such as exposure, focus and image stabilization."

Current digital imaging solutions rely on digital signal processors and application specific integrated circuits that were not designed from the ground up for mobile imaging applications. Nethra has developed a fully flexible and programmable solution that outperforms DSPs and ASICs in handling multi-megapixel imaging and provides added flexibility beyond the performance of ASICs. This will provide consumers with a higher resolution and longer battery life, said Nethra.

"Our goal is to give consumers print-quality images direct from their cell phones," said Ramesh Singh, Nethra's president and chief executive officer. "Film has been the medium used to capture images for almost a century. Now, the industry's challenge is to deliver that same -- or better -- experience using digital technology. We believe we have an innovative solution that makes Nethra the technology of choice for 3-megapixel mobile handset designs of the future."

Nethra's first product entry, the NI-20x0 family of system-on-chip solutions, offers scalable performance to provide system designers the flexibility to meet a range of customer needs. The NI-20x0 products embed software needed to tune the picture quality and system control in the embedded flash.

The SOC includes an image processing engine, 32KB of SRAM, 64KB of embedded Flash memory, an embedded ARM core and SDRAM in an 8 mm square chip scale package with 1.0 to 1.2 mm mounted thickness. System peripherals include pulse width modulators, general purpose input-output devices and serial peripheral interfaces. NI-2080 and NI-2090 products have integrated SDRAM, and NI-2070 supports external SDRAM. The product's image processing engine is capable of processing image sensor data that in turn can produce print quality images. These digital-image processing SOCs are designed and architected for low power and cost sensitive applications such as camera modules in wireless and PDA imaging applications.

NI-20x0 development platforms are now available for product evaluation and software development. Nethra is shipping product to select customers and plans to have production quantities available in Q3 2005. Contact Nethra for detailed pricing and availability.